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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29111514">they walked into the desert</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Ghost_Kristoff/pseuds/That_Ghost_Kristoff'>That_Ghost_Kristoff</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>into the desert [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Force Demigod Anakin Skywalker, Human Disaster Anakin Skywalker, Minor Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Miscommunication, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Protective Obi-Wan Kenobi, Tatooine Slave Culture (Star Wars), That's Not How The Force Works (Star Wars), Unreliable Narrator Anakin Skywalker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:00:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,010</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29111514</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Ghost_Kristoff/pseuds/That_Ghost_Kristoff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Anakin Skywalker is nineteen when he learns that the bomb in his neck is inactive.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Obi-Wan Kenobi &amp; Anakin Skywalker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>into the desert [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2135958</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>538</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>they walked into the desert</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is part of a much larger fix-it, "Anakin-Doesn't-Go-Dark" series. I guess you can say it sets the tone?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>At nineteen, Anakin Skywalker returns home for the second time in ten years with his first owner’s nephew under his charge. Sand skitters away under his boots, so each footstep carries over the empty dunes, with Obi-Wan’s—</span>
  <em>
    <span>Master </span>
  </em>
  <span>Obi-Wan, who these days says not to call him </span>
  <em>
    <span>master </span>
  </em>
  <span>and might </span>
  <em>
    <span>be</span>
  </em>
  <span> a master but doesn’t always seem to know what that means—following as a hollow echo. This late into the night, the worst of the heat’s burned away, so the desert is as close to cool as it will ever come. Anakin is silent, so Obi-Wan is silent. On the man’s back, the squirming huttlet wails, a long, thin cry, steady into the dark. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The damnable thing stinks of rubbish left too long in the suns, and uncooked meat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re alone, because Anakin insisted. Earlier, when he exited the newly stolen starship with the rucksack holding that </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing</span>
  </em>
  <span> slung over one arm, Obi-Wan protested his new padawan’s exclusion. “I brought you everywhere,” he said. “It’s only fair she also learns by example. Don’t you see that—” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was more, but Anakin still got what he wanted in the end: Ahsoka waiting on the ship and Obi-Wan tasked with the sack. Anakin got what he wanted because he said, “They’ll want to buy her.” After that, there wasn’t anything else to say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So they’re walking through the desert, through the Dune Sea, in the night with a slaver on Obi-Wan’s back, a slaver so young that all he does is cry. Around them, the wind swirls out from the nearby canyons across the dunes, sinking sand into their skin. It creeps under Anakin’s tunic sleeves to engrain itself inside the blaster burn he sustained earlier that day. That’s it, then, he thinks. Just more of this place sticking to him, refusing to leave. His skin will scab over that burn soon. Even if he has the chance to clean it, at least some of the sand’s already entered his blood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Together, they walk across the desert. Obi-Wan listens for the threats he knows—Siths and clankers—as Anakin focuses on the wind, listening for a sandstorm, or worse. Above them, the moons hang full and low above the Sea, slicing through the cold blue swathing the dunes with silver strips. Steadily, they near Jabba’s Palace, a place he hasn’t seen since he was three, and as they near, he counts his luck: that it’s war and he still has consistent access to water, the Jedi’s permission for him to hold a military rank, their permission for him to participate in the process reserved for the free, his permittance to teach, to fly, to travel, to engineer, to have a bedroom to call his own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Obi-Wan was strict sometimes, but never cruel. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Obi-Wan never raised his hand in anger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Obi-Wan, when Anakin was nine and unused to having a bedroom to call his own, stayed with him until he fell asleep. When he was nine, Obi-Wan taught him to read and write and swim. When he was twelve, Obi-Wan brought him to the ice caves of Ilum to find his crystal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So there’s also that. Anakin carries a weapon, openly and with permission.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nine days before Master Qui-Gon won him but not his mother in a podrace, Little Ani hid behind a pile of spare parts when alone in the shop to avoid selling to a Pantoran with blood beneath his fingernails and an electric shock poised to sting in his shadow. The electric shock was metaphorical. Intangible. Watto didn’t care about an intangible, metaphorical electric shock, which was a warning from the Force to stay away, or the very tangible blood—all he cared about was losing business. No, he didn’t hit his most profitable slave. He didn’t hit his mother, either. He just withheld food from them for half a week.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the past ten years, the Jedi have never withheld food. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the past ten years, the Jedi have loaned him out to the Chancellor, but mostly, it’s not so bad. Mostly, the man just wants someone to talk with, or to mentor, maybe. Like a son or a grandson. Mostly, it’s not like the rental arrangements on Tatooine. There’s a sort of luck to that, that it’s only him, and it’s not so bad. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Better luck is Padmé, though their whole marriage is built on a lie. During the journey from Geonosis to Naboo, when his head was hazy from the recent amputation and more recent prosthetic, she sat beside him on the narrow cot where he would have slept, if only starships weren’t so cold, and asked, “Do you love me, Ani?” and then asked, “Will you marry me?” because he said that of course he did, he always had, how didn’t she know? But what he never says is </span>
  <em>
    <span>I have a chip in my neck that will detonate if the Order discovers you’re my wife</span>
  </em>
  <span>, nor </span>
  <em>
    <span>I can never be the husband you want because Master Qui-Gon won me in a podrace and never thought to tell you. </span>
  </em>
  <span>She deserves to know, but the words needed to tell her refuse to form. The guilt of silence mingles with his guilt over returning here, for the second time in ten years, to return a slaver youngling rather than free the others like him. Combined, the guilt burns.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, Padmé is a gift. Before that, when he admitted the truth about his mother and his nightmares, she said, as mild as can be, “I think I’d like a second tour of Tatooine in the morning,” so he had no choice but to bring her. What he hadn’t told her is that during their time there, anyone who looked at them assumed she was the one in command of the bomb in his spinal cord.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For the past ten years, no one’s threatened him with detonation. He doesn’t even know which member of the Council controls the chip. There’s a sort of luck to that, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Together, he and Obi-Wan trek across the desert. Their footsteps and their breathing roll through the dunes, and that </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing</span>
  </em>
  <span>’s irritation twists into the wind. Anakin forcibly does not think about his last visit to Jabba’s palace. Back then, the night started with Gardulla as the one who determined whether he and his mother lived or died, and ended with that right going to Watto. They both came away from the visit bloody.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For Anakin, whose memories reach back earlier than the average lifeform, that night is one of his first.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the top of the structure rises from the Sea, he stops. “Let me do the talking,” he says as Obi-Wan slows to a halt half a step ahead of him. As Anakin unhooks his lightsaber, he adds, “Don’t do anything to make them think this is mine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve already met with Jabba,” the other man says, eyeing the weapon warily. “He has a protocol droid for translation.” In the unobscured moonlight, his undyed tunic is the colour of bone and the blonder untones in his hair are bleached white. He’s too pale for the desert. With that </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing</span>
  </em>
  <span> out of view, the stench and the keening seem to exude from him to travel, disembodied, over the sand like one of the malevolent spirits the old tales claim haunt the dunes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not about Huttese,” Anakin says, pushing his lightsaber into his hand. “I’m betting Dooku’s convinced them we’re responsible for the kidnapping. Let me handle it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Doubtful, Obi-Wan says, “You aren’t exactly known for your diplomacy,” even as he hooks the saber to his belt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just trust me, Master,” Anakin says, too exhausted to argue or explain. To his relief, the other man agrees, though with a slight downward turn of his mouth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a headache flickering to life behind his left eyebrow. He wants to have this done. He wants to be back on the front with his men and his new padawan, where he doesn’t need to think, or in Coruscant, where he can spend a night beside his wife on her soft mattress beneath her soft sheets. He wants a shower. He wants to fly and he wants something to fix.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wants his mother.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the twenty minute nap he snatched in hyperspace on the journey here, the one he snatched just to avoid Ahsoka’s questions, he dreamt about the heat. It was midday, and he was alone on the plain outside the canyon of Xelric Draw, where the sunlight scorched the water from his body, and scorched any remnants of kindness from the landscape. The Draw looked the way it always did when he remembered it—the flatlands copper and ochre, tan and tawny and flax under an endless blue sky broken only by the suns, one gold and the other a flaring white. The heat shrivelled his throat dry and the sand clogged his lungs. Then he woke, shivering upright in the pilot’s seat, because in his sleep, someone’s arms wrapped around him from behind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s only felt truly warm once in the past ten years, and it was when he returned in time for his mother to die.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not often, these days, that he dreams about the desert and the Tatooine heat. Even his mother’s death wasn’t enough to revive them. If his luck holds out, then this visit home won’t be enough to revive them either.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Together, he and Obi-Wan complete the final stretch of their journey across the desert. Anakin gets them through the door, slipping back into the language of his childhood like he’s never slept on anything but the thin pallet he shared with his mother in the Mos Espa slave quarters. In Huttese, he says into the surveil-cam, “Please inform His Excellency Jabba Desilijic Tiure of Nal Hutta that Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi has rescued his son from the Separatists. Master Kenobi has returned with him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They wait. Obi-Wan looks about to speak—to ask—but holds his tongue when Anakin shakes his head. That surveil-cam is still watching them, after all. They can’t afford mistakes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time the doors rise, he’s so jittery it’s hard to remember how to breathe. He follows Obi-Wan and their escorts in a daze, feeling for threats and coming up with too much long-standing malice to distinguish any in particular. When he was three, he hadn’t paid any notice to the main corridor, but he does recognise the room the escorts deposit them into, the one where live music spills from the opposite end from the door to wind between the bodies and up to the vaulted ceilings, where a Twi’lek with a chain attached to her ankle dances for everyone’s pleasure but her own, where His Excellency Jabba Desilijic Tiure of Nal Hutta rules, lounging, from the dias. It’s a little different, but not much. More tables, fewer columns near the back. Jabba renovated at some point in the last sixteen years.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s not surprising. He could renovate continuously, and still have a surplus of cash to waste on spice and free labour.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before they can speak, half the room has them at weapon point. In the time it takes for an enforcer to rip that </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing</span>
  </em>
  <span> from them, Anakin has himself on his knees and into a bow, his forehead on his folded hands, with a practiced movement his body never forgot. He senses Obi-Wan’s spike of shock, and closes off their bond before the other man knows that Anakin’s heartbeat is too fast from remembered fear and his own long-standing malice. Still in Huttese, he says, “Your Excellency,” though the words are rotten in his mouth. He says, “Master Kenobi has rescued your son from the deceitful Count Dooku and his apprentice, who thought they could fool Your Eminence with lies about the Jedi’s intentions. Master Kenobi humbly asks that Your Eminence consider again your previous negotiation.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neither Jabba nor the protocol droid answer immediately. The entire room is still, waiting, so the only living sound is his son burbling with the glee of being home. Then Jabba lets Anakin rise. He keeps his gaze downcast, like he should, once he’s on his feet, but that doesn’t matter. Even with his attention focused on the dirtied metal floor, he feels the eyes on him, peeling him apart. He thinks about the bogey story the younglings in Mos Espa slave quarter told about His Eminence of Tatooine sucking out a lifeform’s sentience through their ears. Right now, as the room tries to pare him down with their eyes, he thinks that he wouldn’t be surprised to learn the tale was true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Really, if he’s counting his luck, the truth is that he caught his first break long before Master Qui-Gon won him in a podrace. The truth is, Anakin first got lucky when Watto won him and his mother in a gamble against Gardulla here, in this room, sixteen years ago. Watto wasn’t too bad. Gardulla, on the other hand, detonated her slaves just for fun.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They negotiate. Anakin speaks in platitudes to stoke Jabba’s ego as he explains about Dooku’s duplicity and the Republic’s immaculate record of decent behaviour without paying full attention to what he’s saying. He neglects mentioning that the one to engineer the rescue was him, the slave, keeping details vague. Somehow, it works. It works so well that at the end, Jabba asks Obi-Wan who is this slave, this slave who he lets speak for him. Before the protocol droid can translate, Anakin half-turns and says in Basic, “He’s asking you my name, Master. And what would be your cost.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even if Obi-Wan likes to pretend Anakin doesn’t have a bomb in his spinal cord, he’s too smart to jeopardise a mission just because he’s friendly. “Anakin Skywalker, Your Excellency,” he says, “and he’s not for sale</span>
  <em>
    <span>.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jabba laughs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It rumbles up through his body and out through his cracked open mouth as his guests join in and the music restarts. He must have known from the beginning. They should have expected as much, since Dooku was here first. Inevitably, Dooku would have given the name </span>
  <em>
    <span>Skywalker</span>
  </em>
  <span> when laying out his plot. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well. That’s just grand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Obi-Wan, playing innocent, tries to ask about what everyone’s finding oh so funny. When Jabba answers, Anakin, rather than the droid, translates, “His Eminence thanks you for returning his sister’s property. Master.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At nine, he explained about Gardulla. He had to, once his master saw the marks on his back. Now, righteously indignant and failing not to show it, Obi-Wan says, “I’m sorry, Your Excellency, but he has not been your sister’s property since he was three-years-old.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Force thickens, closing in, so Anakin’s thoughts spin and his throat constricts as the protocol droid translates, “His Eminence has decided that the exchange of lifeforms through betting can no longer be considered a valid transaction. His Eminence says that you must return his sister’s property or pay the current market price for a slave in this condition. Otherwise His Eminence must hold the Jedi accountable for wrongful </span>
  <span>possession </span>
  <span>of Hutt chattel.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But Anakin </span>
  <em>
    <span>isn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>a slave—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he snaps his head in Obi-Wan’s direction, his eyes wide and body tense, the other man stops, sensing Anakin’s—what? Confusion? Distress? No, something more complicated than that, because he feels without a doubt that the other man isn’t lying. Whatever the something is, it’s gotten into his bloodstream. Sneaked right into it through the blaster wound along with the grit, so all he hears now is his pulse thrumming in his ears. Up on the dias, Jabba talks and the droid translates and then Obi-Wan says, “General Skywalker’s freedom is non-negotiable,” with a bristle in his voice that has the room laughing. Again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anakin loses track after that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The last time he was here, he was three and Jabba’s sister lost him and his mother to their second owner in a bet. She hissed about it after. Called Watto a cheat. Called </span>
  <em>
    <span>that boy</span>
  </em>
  <span> a little sneak. The two swapped the detonators with a bad-natured handshake. Before they left, one of the flimsy entertainers who liked to flutter around Gardulla in an effort to gain her favour warned Watto that </span>
  <em>
    <span>the boy</span>
  </em>
  <span> was already growing up witchy. Witchiness is what had </span>
  <em>
    <span>the boy</span>
  </em>
  <span> bleeding at departure, since Gardulla slapped him for, apparently, securing his family’s release.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Out in the desert, when they were under the setting moons, Watto let Little Ani’s mother patch his face, and her own. Gardulla hit her for trying to protect him, or maybe just because she was in the mood to hit someone bigger than a toddler. Watto’s the one who ended it. “They’re not yours anymore,” he said, and that was that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On that day, the matter of who owned Anakin was undeniably negotiable. Despite Obi-Wan’s best efforts, it’s still negotiable today. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They aren’t allowed to kill any Hutts, because that would upset the “power balance” in the Outer Rim, and the Republic </span>
  <em>
    <span>needs </span>
  </em>
  <span>unimpeded passage through the hyperlanes and territory, says the Chancellor—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Chancellor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Anakin’s free, if he’s been free this whole time, if Obi-Wan isn’t lying, then—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>To maintain the power balance, Obi-Wan pays. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The price is ridiculous, too high for any slave from Tatooine, but he doesn’t negotiate. He pays up from the Temple treasury without warning the Council. Anakin is too numb to react through the process, through the funds transfer and the drafting then signing of the receipt, the detailed instructions the protocol droid gives on how to reactivate the chip in his spine. Anger wavers in lines between other slaves, so many of whom Jabba won in a bet. The Twi’lek who was dancing when they entered has a bloody lip, the sharp incisor made with her own teeth when Obi-Wan signed his name. No one believes he was telling the truth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cradled into his father’s side, the huttlet sleeps, oblivious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the end, Jabba releases them, so Anakin follows Obi-Wan and two escorts out of the room and back into the main corridor. The walls are slick with mould and flaking from rust. Behind them, Jabba and his guests laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Together, Anakin and Obi-Wan walk into the desert. This late into the night, the dunes have cooled from its daytime yellows and reds to blues and greys, and the sky’s gone black beneath its white stars. Their footsteps are audible in the sand, but neither of them speak. Anakin’s hands shake. So does Obi-Wan’s whole body.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After they returned from Naboo, when the Council decided Anakin could be a padawan despite their earlier refusal, he spent a night in the Halls of Healing. In the morning, Obi-Wan told him that they deemed his health stable, and therefore, he could leave. No one mentioned the chip, but Anakin knows it’s still there. It reacts to lightning or electricity, and when the Force moves through him, it always snags on the metal lodged there in the nape of his neck. Master Qui-Gon hadn’t told him Watto deactivated it, and he knows no one had in the Temple.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thought about cutting it out back when he was nine and no one liked him, not Obi-Wan or the other masters or his agemates, and he thought about cutting it out after the trip to Ilum, where he hallucinated Darth Maul. Since the beginning he knew—</span>
  <em>
    <span>thought</span>
  </em>
  <span> he knew—the Council was only allowing him to do so much because they mistook him for their Chosen One. The risk of self-detonation before they discovered he was not seemed fair. That first time, he was ultimately too scared to do it, and the second, he liked his master too much to try.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Despite telling himself it would never happen, he had, within three years, become that sort of slave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If he really has been free this whole time, if Master Obi-Wan was telling the truth and didn’t just </span>
  <em>
    <span>believe </span>
  </em>
  <span>he was telling the truth, then why hasn’t someone else removed the chip?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh, Anakin thinks abruptly. This means his marriage to Padmé is real. Anakin thinks, </span>
  <em>
    <span>But what about now?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Soon, the last sign of Jabba’s palace disappears behind a dune. Obi-Wan stops his walking, and says, “Ani,” so Anakin jumps. He wasn’t expecting the other man to speak, and certainly not to fall back on his childhood nickname. Again, Obi-Wan says, “Ani,” then pauses, struggling, before continuing, “I did what I had to so we could leave safely. It was a cruel trick he played, but it does not mean I—own you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stumbles over the word </span>
  <em>
    <span>own</span>
  </em>
  <span>. There are so, so many things Anakin needs to ask, but when he tries to form them, his brain refuses to cobble the sentences together into any semblance of sense. For a third time, Obi-Wan says, “Ani,” except he says it in alarm with a question mark at the end, though Anakin can’t understand why until he realises he isn’t breathing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Between them bubbles the Force, building against an unseen pressure point. Obi-Wan says, “Anakin,” and says it again. He says it a third time as he wraps his hands around Anakin’s upper arms, then tells him Dooku might be out here, so he needs to calm himself. “Anakin,” he says. “Breathe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span> In the night sometimes, Anakin wakes from dreams about his body burning under an inflamed sky. Padmé, when he’s with her, wraps herself around him and says, “Breathe, Ani. Like me. In and out.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he tries. In, out. The air’s jagged. There’s a storm brewing, he thinks. There must be, because the wind has as many edges as each inhale, and something somewhere is screaming. It’s one of the desert spirits from the old tales. It’s Force, warning him to run.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Openly concerned now, Obi-Wan repeats his name once, twice. “We need to leave,” he says, raising his voice above the wind. “Anakin—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wind scatters Anakin’s thoughts to dust.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Obi-Wan watches it happen. Obi-Wan, who at the age of thirty-five knew he has not seen all there was to see but still has certain expectations about what there is to come, watches his ex-padawan’s dilated pupils swallow his irises down to the last slivers of blue as a maelstrom erupts around their feet, here in the centre of the deserted Dune Sea. “Anakin!” he says, though he knows it’s useless, as the swirl widens and spreads to thrust a sandstorm across the desert with them safe in the eye. There’s a lot he’s had to process in the last two hours—the abrupt and poorly timed revelation that the boy he raised never realised he was free, that he just paid money to keep that misunderstanding from becoming true, that he would have killed Jabba the Hutt with very little regard to the consequences had that not been an option—but witnessing Anakin call up a storm with nothing but his panic may be one new discovery too many.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Obi-Wan forces Anakin down, his head between his knees, the boy lets him. His hands go to his hair, gripping so tightly it must hurt. “Sorry,” Obi-Wan makes out, and, “I’m trying,” and he thinks he hears, “There’s something—something I need to tell you, Master.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Master.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Obi-Wan flinches at the title, the sound of skating through their bond in the Force with the heat of a blaster shot. He rubs a hand between Anakin’s shoulder blades, unsure what else he can do, and stares at the back of the boy’s neck. The moonlight still touches them in this storm’s eye, alighting on the skin revealed when his hair slid off to either side. Bleakly, Obi-Wan thinks, </span>
  <em>
    <span>That’s where it is, the slave chip.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>At twenty-five, he witnessed his master’s murder and murdered the murderer. He took on Anakin as his padawan because that was Master Qui-Gon’s dying wish. At twenty-five, he was too embroiled in grief and guilt and abject self-pity to consider what the boy in his charge may or may not know. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>During Anakin’s night in the Halls of Healing, his first night in the temple, the healer took Obi-Wan aside. “The slave chip is deactivated,” she said, as though Obi-Wan at the time knew anything about slaves and chips and what that meant, “but it’s embedded into his spine. His body seems to have grown around it, so it’s unlikely we can remove it without risking permanent paralysis. I suspect it was implanted when he was an infant.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They opted not to tell him since it was deactivated. It couldn’t harm him, so there was no need to give the boy false hope. It never even occurred to Obi-Wan that Anakin thought the bomb his spine grew around was still active.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tells Anakin all this now, dropping the story into the wind like a secret. “And you’re still free,” he says, a little desperate, even as the knife-edge intensity starts to lessen in the Force. “I can explain more, but we need to leave. Dooku might be here, and your padawan needs you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>These statements are both true, which Obi-Wan guesses, but he can’t know for certain. Back on the stolen ship, Ahsoka Tano frantically presses the transmission controls, trying to contact Master Sky—no, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Anakin</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he said, not master, never master, because he’s only five years older than she is so it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>weird</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he said, which is why it’s Anakin or Skyguy, but—Ahsoka Tano frantically presses transmission controls, trying to contact Anakin or Master Kenobi, or the closest Republic starfleet, even. The R2 unit beeps and chirps behind, trying and failing to help. In her reflection, she looks every bit as young as she is, and as she feels. Earlier, she hadn’t understood why Skyguy thought the huttlet was such a nightmare, though the smell was definitely infernal, but maybe his dislike is connected to whyever the Force isn’t right. Maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s the Seppies. Maybe it’s just the storm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except that this storm isn’t right either, which is why Ahsoka bothers to frantically press the same buttons over and over, expecting a different result. There’s something out there in the dunes. In the dark. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is not, she knows, a natural phenomenon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dooku knows this too. He lost his droids within minutes of the wind rising, and barely has control of his speeder, but Young Skywalker’s lit himself up as a beacon in the Force, guiding Dooku towards the storm’s epicentre. When he draws close to them, he spies, through the whipping sand, this:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the eye, the shade that is Anakin Skywalker glows a faint white-blue, like a holo or a ghost. The light dims and brightens without rhythm. Obscuring it is the shade of Obi-Wan Kenobi, who crouches over him, around him, one hand on the boy’s back and the other on his lightsaber, ready to attack. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The protective curl of Kenobi’s body matched with the self-protective curl of Skywalker’s should mark this as an easy fight, but not that light. Dooku hesitates on the edge of the storm, scrutinising the scene through the mobile screen, and decides he’d rather live to fight another day.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Distantly, Anakin feels the presence he recognises as Count Dooku’s disappear into the night. With an unsteady exhale, he drops his head into Obi-Wan’s shoulder and lets his hands slide from his hair. “I’m sorry,” he says in a mumble as the wind slows around them. He’s more exhausted than he’s ever been, and wants to fall asleep right here, right now. To stay that way for hours, or forever. He wants to sleep, and he wants a shower, and he wants his men, and he wants his mother. He says, “I should’ve—I’m—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We need to leave,” Obi-Wan says, his head moving left and right and back again. This close, he smells of the night-time chill and the rations soap. “Dooku—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s gone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Excuse me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He gets Anakin to his feet as he says, “Just now. He saw us, I guess, and decided there were better places to be.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though Obi-Wan doesn’t like that answer, he accepts it. That’s good, because Anakin’s too raw to hold a conversation. Obi-Wan must have used the Force to protect them from the storm, but Anakin’s nerves still spark like he had days of hot wind and hotter sand stripping his body down to nothing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He saw the aftermath of that once, when he was seven. An old slave escaped into the desert just as a storm swept across the Draw. Her owner hadn’t bothered to detonate the chip; everyone knew the sand would do the same job with twice the pain. When they dragged back her corpse in the morning, she only had half her face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Together, Anakin and Obi-Wan walk across the desert. As the ship comes into view, half-buried from sand but protruding enough to still fly, a question finally assembles itself into a straight line. Anakin inclines his head towards Obi-Wan, looking at him </span>
  <em>
    <span>without </span>
  </em>
  <span>looking at him, as he asks, “Are you sure? That it isn’t that you just, I don’t know. Misunderstood.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am positive,” the other man says firmly, his mouth set in a line. “Yes, there was a bet on the podrace, but it was for your freedom, not to own you. Force, Anakin. This entire time you thought I was—” He doesn’t finish, but sighs, and waves towards the ship, where Ahsoka appears in the window, gesturing for them to come with both arms. “I’ll need to explain to the Council where the money went,” he says. “I’ll make your excuses for the debriefing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks,” Anakin says, because he’s spent too many years trying to wriggle out of debriefings to make a fuss about it now, even if the whole situation is humiliating. “It looks like Ahsoka’s managed to get the hatch open. We’ll need to enter through the roof.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Together, they finish crossing the desert. For the third time in ten years, as the first of the false dawn light creeps along the horizon, Anakin Skywalker leaves Tatooine behind. </span>
</p>
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